Emil Fischer and His Scientific Work

When Emil Fischer died in August, 1919, at the age of 67 years, he bequeathed a life-work of rare comprehensiveness. He had contributed greatly to our knowledge of the material world, and especially to that of organisms. He refocused the thinking in organic chemistry back to its starting point, the world of animated Nature. 

In the summer of 1892, although reluctant to abandon Wtirzburg, of which he had grown so fond, he accepted an appointment to the greatest professional chair that Kaiser Wilhelm s Reich had to offer, the chair of chemistry in Berlin, vacated by the death of August Wilhelm von Hofmann. Althoff, the director of the Universities Section in the Prussian Ministry of Education, promised the now forty-year-old Fischer a large new Institute. 

However, it was only after much controversy that the latter was occupied eight years later. Out of this conflict with Althoff grew mutual respect and friendship. The Institute was magnificently designed for the standards of that time. It was destroyed during World War II, but was rebuilt essentially in its original form and the design of the Institute is, today, still a practical one. 

The illness and early death of his wife, and the loss of two sons in the First World War, saddened the life of the now lonely man. Yet he lived to see the beginning of the successful scientific career of his son Hermann.1 

Even such a talented life of investigation has its high-lights and shadows. Periods of impetuous progress were followed by years of moderate advances, for example, at the end of the first decade of this century, when his work on the proteins came to a stop because of experimental difficulties insurmountable at that time. It is greatness, too, to bear such periods of lesser productivity calmly and without becoming disconcerted. 

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In 1951, he received the Emil Fischer Medal of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and in 1957, the Grosse Verdienstkreuz (Grand Service Cross) of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart conferred upon him the honorary doctorate of Dr. ing. h.c. The Saxon Academy of Science and the Leopoldina in Halle, East Germany, elected him an honorary member. His scientific work, which found expression in 328 publications and 16 patents, is characterized by originality and a comprehensive command of experimental method. 

Until the early years of the twentieth century Emil Fischer and Carl Duisberg were not closely connected. They met each other at special occasions in Berlin, for example in committees for the organisation of education and for revision of examination standards for chemists. Fischer did not have many close relationships, and Carl Duisberg found that it was difficult to move beyond business to friendship. Most of their correspondence concentrated on relations of the Farbenfabriken Bayer with Fischer and discussions about chemical problems with the members of the scientific laboratory. Some of Fischer s students took positions at Bayer. Fischer knew some of them when he stayed in Munich. Therefore he often asked them directly when he wanted to get special chemicals or instruments for his work. Duisberg, who as member of the board was confronted with many more important problems, and who was frequently away meeting other people in Germany or in foreign countries, was not able to trouble himself with such minor affairs. 

Most certainly, Curtius did not intend to enter protein chemistry when he started his work on hippuric acid and glycine. In the following years he was mainly fascinated by his discovery of diazo-fatty acid esters and the multitude of their reactions and so scarcely acquired interest in peptones and albuminoids. During the last decade of the past century, however, stimulated by E. Fischer s vigorous activity, Curtius resumed his studies, by which he contributed so much to modern peptide chemistry. It is somewhat ironical that Fischer s engagement, that had an immense echo at that time left less practical application for peptide chemistry than Curtius invention of the azide coupling method. Emil Fischer s great merit is to have drawn the attention of the whole scientific world to the field of proteins, whose mystery could be revealed by application of chemical methods and to lend trust to chemists that they are able to synthesize complicated natural substances like peptides. 

Leuchs initial elan, fed by intelligence and power of imagination, which after successful (albeit by Emil Fischer inspired) peptide studies launched him into the difficult chemistry of strychnine alkaloids and also into problems of stereochemistry, diminished later, probably under the influence of some decisive inner experience unknown to us. After a while his life was consumed by work in the laboratory he remained unimpressed by the rich cultural and scientific distractions offered by Berlin, that time in its heydays. After 1908 his principal field became strychnine chemistry and related alkaloids 125 of his 178 publications deal with this topic. 

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